Notes on appetites and breakups

Maria, a young Brazilian woman, spends a lonely afternoon at home, cooking and eating. With each new sensation, she revisits the memories of her French lover, who tells us how he was devoured by her. This is the story of "Notes sur les appétits et les ruptures", an experimental short film project for the final year of the Master REX - Recherche et Expérimentation - at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Audiovisuel (ENSAV), dealing with themes such as eroticism, love, movement and rhythm. The film is based on a study of the work of Germaine Dulac, whose aesthetic composition is part of French avant-garde cinema. "Notes sur les appétits et les ruptures" seeks to bring into play the idea of the process of creating and organizing images as a delirious, desiring sensory experience. Desire, gluttony, death, sacrifice and cannibalism meet in this film to create a sensitive experience around two lovers who push their relationship to the extreme. Who ?(for now) Thiago Campelo - writer and director Brazilian director, screenwriter and photographer. Born in São Luís do Maranhão, he graduated in Social Communication - Audiovisual from the University of Brasília in 2018. He has been active in cinema since 2014, when he started writing for the review website "Não São as Imagens". He wrote, directed and produced the short films "Paspalhos" (2016), "IN MEMORIAM" (2018) and "Quando Antares nos encotrar" (2022). He is currently a master's student at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Audiovisuel (ENSAV). Lulu Tiburi - actress: Maria Professional dancer, graduate of the Angel Vianna Dance School in Brazil. Her work is linked to performance, contemporary dance and video art, having participated in the show "A Lingua da Vertebra" (2019) and the video art "Génocide" (2020) by Liliane Mutti. In 2022, she appeared in the short film "Quand Antarès nous trouvera". Maxime Julien - actor: the Lover Maxime is currently working on a thesis in Cinema Aesthetics on the subject of the obscene. Although not trained as an actor, he has experimented with the performing arts in performances that put his body to the test. It is therefore with great pleasure that he will offer his body for our project, which is not so far removed from his research work. Clément Herbert & Danirée Paredes - cinematographers After a degree in audiovisual studies and a master's in cinema, Clément Herbert continued his studies with a diploma in audiovisual research and creation. To date, he has focused mainly on witches and mules, in both fiction and documentary. In 2020, he directed the short film "Terre Noire". In association with Camille Corbel, he also worked as cinematographer on "Quand Antarès nous touvera", directed by Thiago Campelo in 2021. He is currently working on a documentary film project. Danirée Paredes holds a bachelor's degree (+5) in audiovisuals from the University of the Andes, and has 4 years' experience as an intermittent film technician in Venezuela. She recently graduated from ENSAV with a Master's degree in Cinema and Audiovisuals, specializing in research and experimentation. When? Part of the film has already been shot in January 2023, but shooting will end this summer, in mid-August, for completion at the end of October. Where will it be shot? Shot in three different locations, "Notes on Appetites and Ruptures" already has material produced in Brazil, in cities in the state of Ceará: Fortaleza, Russas, Potiretama and Aracati; and Capão da Canoa, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Sequences will also be produced in France, in the city of Toulouse and other locations in the Occitanie region. How does it work? Our teaser shows how the film will be made: The aim is to offer new perspectives on the visual aesthetics of love and eroticism. Movement, rhythms, textures, shapes, shadows and distortions can create an experience linked to desire that goes beyond the representation of bodies and symbolism, but is also constructed as a visual metamorphosis of feelings and orchestrated sensations. The new views we propose look to the past as a way of thinking about the present in the images we produce. Rupture and desynchronization, the manipulation of images on film and digital images that resignify both the viewer's perception and the narrative thread itself are elements that will be used in the constitution of this project. The film will be made using a combination of different photographic media. Some sequences will be shot using the Lomokino camera, an all-plastic support that captures 5 to 6 images per second on film, enhancing the decomposition of movement and emphasizing the texture of the silver image. Other sequences will be produced on digital media, moving closer to contemporary aesthetics based on the notion of realism. "Notes sur les appétits et les ruptures" establishes two narrative axes driven by the epistolary readings of the characters whose actions we follow. Maria, the main character, who cooks, and her ghostly lover who wanders the world until they meet. These two axes lead to a third part, in which we witness the lover's act of sacrifice. Another aspect is the idea of magic realism, so dear to our Latin American reality. Treating extraordinary and magical events as something belonging to reality must follow the north of this story. Furthermore, the space of this film must be understood as a substrate that does not accept the idea of borders, dilutes identities and appropriates references from multiple places. In this sense, Maria, a Brazilian woman who feeds off her French lover, is an expression of Mário de Andrade's "Manifesto Antropofágico" (1928) and an allusion to Nelson Pereira dos Santos' "Como era gostoso o meu francês" (1971). It is essential to consider Dulac's films, such as "Arabesque" (1929) and "Thèmes et Variations" (1928), as the main aesthetic references for this project. More contemporary references include "Ashes" (2012), by Apitchatpong Weerasetakhul, and "Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo" (2010), by Marcelo Gomes and Karim Aïnouz. Superimpositions, image distortions, light reflections, vapors and smoke play an essential role in creating the dreamlike atmosphere that pervades this film. But why? What wounds open when two people meet? Which close? "Notes sur les appétits et les ruptures" is a pertinent project, as it is an allegory of love under the rubble of neoliberalism. The lacerations of affects that run through and devour us allow us to open up to the other, embracing pleasures and sufferings. This is precisely where the film comes in: to create a space for reflection on the wounds of love that need to be experienced and healed. It is also a graduation film that accompanies a dissertation on three short films by Germaine Dulac and her way of constructing a cinema of sensations. "Notes sur les appétits et les ruptures" represents a mixture of reflections and experiences that go beyond film studies. Eroticism, the experience of living in other territories, affective relationships, the exercise of otherness, the dynamics of love relationships and their fissures: all these make up the creative panorama of this project, and materialize a need to complexify form and content in the same filmic material. This film is necessary because it represents an anthropophagic rereading of love and eroticism, while at the same time questioning and proposing a new fabrication of images and visual rhythms.